"It was an eight woman weekend exhibition tournament in Marco Island, FL with $50,000 prize money. It was expected to be a precursor to a forthcoming tour event. None of the world top players were there but they had several stars in the making including Natasha Zvereva, Larisa Savchenko and Gigi Fermandez, the latter of whom was the feature match I was chosen to chair that evening. Before the match Georgina Clark approached me and informed me that Gigi had a tendency to be a bit volatile at times when things aren't going particularly well on the court and to make sure I controlled the match."

"The match went smoothly through midway in the first set when Gigi started to make some errors. After missing a volley into the net, she slammed her racquet on the court, breaking the frame. As she went to get a new racquet from her bag, I announced, Code violation racquet abuse warning Miss Fernandez. She glared at me mumbling something about not hitting the court that hard and the racquet was defective. She lost that set. Then in the second set after a miss she kicked a ball angrily which proceeded to hit a fan in the side of the head. I then announced 'Code violation, ball abuse, point penalty Miss Fernandez. Not only had she lost the point on the shot, she lost the next point on penalty, which was a game point..."

"Gigi ended up losing the match and refused to shake my hand. As I was still sitting in the chair marking up my scorecard, she climbed up the back of the umpire chair and dumped a cigar box full of sawdust on my head. It went down my shirt and all over my face. As I was getting down from the chair to confront her, Georgina intervened and sent Gigi to the locker room. Later as I cleaned up, Georgina brought her back to the court and made her apologize. Such is the life of a tennis 'official.'" From former chair umpire Tom Cooke